How can a talented person feel and become ordinary?

Beloved Osho, you are for me, the most extraordinary person I can imagine. Yet I know that you feel ordinary. Where is the door for a talented and gifted person or a genius to feel and become ordinary? I see that each time I feel special, something goes wrong. But I have still not found the door to real modesty and simplicity. Could you please say something about that?

I do not feel ordinary -- I am. The people who have talents, the gifted, the geniuses -- they also suffer the same problem that you are suffering because they forget that the whole existence is ordinary. A sunrise, howsoever beautiful, is pure ordinariness. A sky full of stars does not feel in any way special. A rosebush full of beautiful flowers and fragrance is just part of the ordinary existence. The talented people get into trouble because they forget their relationship with existence. They become confined and imprisoned in their small talents. What are your talents and what are your geniuses? Because you can paint, you are a genius? Look at the butterflies, look at the flowers, look at the sky when the sun is setting -- the whole existence is so colorful. And because you have painted a small canvas, you have become special. And what have you…

Not only in meditation but in routine life also, I constantly feel a oneness with the existence, egolessness, timelessness. Yet I feel myself ordinary. And I do not find in me the total transformation about which you talk very often.

When you are somebody, you become a rock, you disturb the flow -- life cannot move through you. There is a struggle, a resistance, and of course you create much noise. And you may think that because you are creating so much noise that you are something extraordinary. Be an empty vessel, passage, with no resistance, so that life can flow through it, flow through it easily. Then no noise will be created. You may not be able to feel that you are, because you only feel that you are when you fight. The more you fight, the more you feel. Life flows so smoothly through you that you may even completely forget that you exist. There is no barrier, no resistance, no rejection, no negation. And you are so welcoming that you even forget that you are. It was heard about one Zen master that he would call his…

One last question. A small, final question a friend has asked: Osho, can the capacity for egolessness be available to an ordinary person too?

From his question it sounds as if, poor fellow, how could an ordinary person ever get it? Whereas the truth is: for the extraordinary it is very difficult. Because “extraordinary” itself means egoistic. It can be attained only by the ordinary. But not by the merely ordinary—by the extraordinarily ordinary, one who is ordinary in an extraordinary way. Whom do I call “ordinary-ordinary”? I call him ordinary-ordinary whom everyone else calls ordinary, but who himself does not accept he is ordinary. And whom do I call extraordinarily ordinary? The one whom the world may call extraordinary, yet he knows himself to be ordinary. For twelve years I traveled across the country. I met hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds came to me and said, “What you say—how will it ever be understood by the ordinary man?” I asked them, “Do you understand it?” They said, “I do understand; but how…

In the process of becoming more ordinary, what is happening, to the ego?

Somebody asked Jesus, "What is the secret of entering into your kingdom of God?" and he said, "Ask the lilies or the fish or the flowers. Ask!" What is the secret of a lily flower? What is the beauty of the poor lily? What is the richness of the poor lily? The richness is that it is always here and now, it knows only the present time. It knows nothing of the past and nothing of the future. Remember, if you are interested in the future you will always remain attached to the past. Why? Because if you want to become somebody, from where will you get the knowledge to become? The knowledge will be supplied by the past, by the memory, by the skill that you have learned, by all the experiences that you have passed through. The knowledge will be supplied by the past, the know-how will be…

Beloved master, please speak on the difference between mediocrity and ordinariness.

The ordinary person has no need to be a hypocrite, no need to be a pretender. He is just open; he need not be secretive. And there is beauty in openness, simpleness. So it is a rare paradox that the person who feels himself ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the person who goes on feeling himself extraordinary, remains very retarded, a mediocrity. Everybody has to look within himself. But people are such deceivers that, deceiving others, slowly slowly they start deceiving themselves. They become so articulate about deceiving. It is dangerous to be a hypocrite, because sooner or later you will start thinking this is your real face. In my thirty-five years' work with people I have come across thousands of people, intimately, and I was puzzled that these people have deceived themselves. To deceive others can be understood, but they have deceived themselves. And you cannot take them out of…